Advanced eBooks: Fixed Layout eBooks from QuarkXPress

Picture books. Full-page image chil­dren’s books. Fixed lay­out ebooks. These are all the same type of ebook (see exam­ples below), and their impact in the mar­ket is phe­nom­e­nal. Apple’s iBookStore sells fixed lay­out ebooks like hot­cakes; read­ers can’t get enough. Most peo­ple, how­ev­er, are com­plete­ly mys­ti­fied about the tech­niques of their cre­ation. This course will solve that, tak­ing you hands-on through the cre­ation of fixed lay­out ebooks for sale in the iBookStore (and, in the near future, oth­er ebook sell­ers’ stores and devices). You will learn the process and tech­niques of cre­at­ing ful­ly illus­trat­ed (full-page image) pic­ture books and chil­dren’s books using desk­top lay­out soft­ware QuarkXPress. We’ll also use Photoshop to pre­pare images for pub­li­ca­tion.

The fol­low­ing are exam­ples of fixed lay­out ebooks. By the end of this course you will be able to make ful­ly illus­trat­ed ebooks just like these.

Image cred­its: Image 1 from the ebook Plug & the Paddywhacks by Scholar & Saint. Images 2, 3, and 4 from the book The Secret Museum of Mankind, design by Pariah Burke. Image 4 from The Cat in the Hat ebook by Oceanhouse Media.